The Baltic states, also known as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, contain three very interesting Eastern European national capitals, all of which in their own right boast dozens upon dozens of historic buildings, and all having their own distinct personality and atmosphere. In addition to this, they have an ever growing nightlife and cultural scene. Outside of the urban areas we can find expansive pieces of untouched virgin countryside, with a sea of dark green pine forest and a periodic pinch of silver birch, tranquil blue lakes side by side with many swamps and marshes, perched beside hundreds of kilometers of silvery beaches. The countryside is dotted with villages that resemble the paintings of Marc Chagall, their cute churches and rickety wooden houses lined up along the tight, rugged roads. As with any region that has historically been subject to foreign invasions, there are historic ruins in abundance, each with it’s own story to tell, be they the jagged remains of fortresses built by Teutonic Knights in the 13th century, or unmaintained military installations put up during the Soviet years centuries later, showing signs of gradually increasing decay.

Even though being under the Soviet Union for 50 or so years in recent history has brought Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians closer together as peoples, they tend to think of the term “Baltic states” to be more geared as a geographical region as opposed to their uniqueness and individuality as cultures and countries. Where Estonians are more distinct, there are similarities between Latvians and Lithuanians such as linguistic, in addition to both being settled by Indo-European tribes at around 2000 BC. The ancestors of the Estonians are thought to have inhabited the area some 3000 years prior to the ancestors of the Latvians and Lithuanians, and fall into the Finno-Ugric linguistic group making them share more linguistic familiarities with Finnish than with their Latvian and Lithuanian neighbors.

The Lithuanians are the ones that historically stood apart in history, creating an empire that was also religiously important at the time, as the Lithuanians converted to Catholicism in order to join in matrimony together with Poland to create the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a superpower of medieval Europe. In contrast to the Lithuanians, the Estonians and Latvians were conquered by the Teutonic Knights in the 13th century, exposed to a German speaking feudal culture for hundreds of years that by the middle of the 15th century had become primarily Protestant. Beginning in the 1800’s, there was a conjoining of the three Baltic states through the expanding of the Russian Empire under Peter the Great, beginning with Estonia and Latvia, and then several decades later, Lithuania as well.